S.A. reality star's employee sentenced for swindle

Updated 10:02 pm, Wednesday, February 6, 2013

A former employee of reality TV star Armando Montelongo Jr. has been sentenced to five years in prison for defrauding the San Antonio-based real estate mogul out of $105,000.

Salvador Galvan Ramirez, an ex-con whose job at Armando Montelongo Seminars included issuing credit card refunds for customers who had second thoughts about the investment training program, pleaded no contest in December to money laundering.

On Monday, state District Judge Sid Harle gave Ramirez, 37, the maximum sentence under the plea agreement and ordered him to pay restitution to the company if later released on parole.

The company, which reported $47.1 million in revenue in 2010, charged $1,500 for three-day seminars and $25,000 for its “master's degree” program, which includes a year of mentoring, according to a previous San Antonio Express-News profile on the businessman.

An audit of Ramirez's work revealed he had issued credit card refunds of as high as $25,000 at a time to people who never were signed up as students.

One of the refund recipients, Basilio Valdez, told police he met a man who called himself “George” while fishing at Braunig Lake who offered him $500 to set up a new bank account.

The stranger said he was coming into some money but was afraid because of debts that the bank would confiscate it if the money was put under his name, Valdez told police.

Valdez's account received two $20,000 transactions and he kept $10,300 of it for himself, he told police, adding that he never saw “George” again after paying him the rest in cash.

Married couple Trinidad and Roddy Ferdin told prosecutors they were recruited by Ramirez, who coached their son's football team and pitched their involvement as a real estate “investment opportunity.”

After one deposit, they told police, they were instructed to meet Ramirez at his daughter's soccer game with $9,000 in cash.

When confronted by office manager Stacy Rodriguez about the missing money, Ramirez allegedly threatened to leave the country with $1 million and said, “If bodies show up missing, then bodies show up missing.”

Defense attorney Philip Perez described his client to the judge as a community volunteer who had no issues abiding by his conditions of bond.